SIU Board awards contracts

SPRINGFIELD – The Southern Illinois University Board of Trustees awarded more than $500,000 in contracts Thursday to three Illinois companies and two Missouri companies for construction of a Secondary Computing Center on the Edwardsville campus.

The funding for the work will come from the Information Technology Fee and from Library Operating Funds.

The bids were given final approval at the board’s regular monthly meeting, conducted on the campus of the SIU School of Medicine in Springfield.

A contract worth $140,968 was awarded to Limbaugh Construction Co. of Granite City to build a steel frame building. Other contracts for the Computer Center project were awarded to CDW Government Inc. of Vernon Hills, $196,577 for an integrated server rack system; CK Power of St. Louis, $32,500 for a backup generator and a transfer switch; and Automatic Fire Sprinkler LLC of Normal, $77,938 for a fire suppression system and $55,500 for a packaged air-cooled chiller.

At its June meeting, the board approved the project and the total $800,000 budget for the center that will provide back-up data storage facilities for the main computing center on campus, work space for the Computer Refresh Program and secure storage for some of Lovejoy Library’s special collections. The 3,200-square-foot center is scheduled for completion by the end of August.

The total cost of the project includes Facilities Management services, equipment and a contingency fund.

In other business Thursday, the board approved an $8 increase in the School of Pharmacy Student Technology fee, from $208 per semester last year to $216 per semester beginning in the fall semester. The fee provides for student laptops, as well as risk insurance and replacement for the units. The increase will allow for replacement laptop batteries and an upgrade to Windows Vista. The laptops are needed for the students to access course materials through the school’s course management system, as well as library resources, online assessments and research.

The board also gave first reading to a proposal to provide an alternate tuition rate of $6,150 per semester for SIUE students with non-resident status who are participating in a dual diploma program with Istanbul Technical University in Turkey.

In 2007, the board approved a “Revision to Residency Status Policies,” which allows the president and the chancellors to consider alternative tuition rates for special situations and/or special populations. This option permits the chancellors to better recruit students who might not otherwise attend SIU.

SIUE and ITU are pursuing a collaboration to provide an innovative dual diploma program that would bring high-achieving students from ITU to study at SIUE. This program also would assist the Republic of Turkey in expanding its capacity to deliver higher education to its citizens, and enrich the global diversity of the students at SIUE.

The initial program to be included under this collaboration is a bachelor’s program in industrial engineering.

If approved, the alternative tuition would begin with the fall semester. The proposed rate is some 66 percent higher than the current in-state rate for Illinois residents and approximately 34 percent lower than the current out-of-state rate, and would allow SIUE to remain competitive with other institutions with dual diploma programs with ITU in other areas of engineering.